To: ms.smartest.person who wrote (1215 ) 6/28/2006 3:15:48 PM From: ms.smartest.person Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 3198 ₪ David Pescod's Late Edition June 27, 2006CORRIENTE RESOURCES (T-CTQ) $4.75 -0.20 Ken Shannon, the President of Corriente Resources, is still relishing recent meals of barbequed Caribou he had in Northern Saskatchewan and the Northwest Territories and is probably still pondering over the different roles that mining company executives might have these days versus 10 or 20 years ago. He recently escorted a continuant of Shuar Indians from Ecuador to the northern Canadian locations, that surround some mining operations, to give the Ecuadorian locals a looksee at how mining operations can affect aboriginal communities in northern Canada. It was quite an experience, Shannon suggests, and he certainly is appreciative of the mine tour that Cameco (CCO-T) featured on the trip as well. The Shuar, which are a native group from Ecuador that has to be described as fearsome, were one of the last known groups to practice head hunting in Latin America. They were up mainly to take a look-see at how they hope to see mining operations in Ecuador developed and learning from the experience of the aboriginal groups in northern Canada, but the one thing that came across to them, Shannon says, was their surprise that over the vast Canadian northlands (that they flew over) how very few people there were. In Ecuador, over every hill there is still more people, but not so in the vast Canadian north. The Shuar learned and met first hand some of the natives in the Canadian mines that started maybe 10 or 15 years ago as laborers, that have worked themselves up into management positions or as environmental coordinators or the like, and how they and the community have benefited from mining development. Shannon says that this is now one of the major responsibilities of mining executives—suddenly its not knowing the competency of your pit or how to transport your ore, crush it or whatever…..suddenly its learning to live with your social community and find an agreement with the community around mining operations no matter where they might be in the world. He also talks about several examples that exist today, where an obvious potential mine that has not been developed because of such problems. Yes they put together the trip and yes they paid for it, but he figures its just one of the many hoops that you have to jump through to build a mine in today’s world. If you don’t do it, maybe the mine doesn’t get built ... In the Shuar community, Aurelian Resources has made a recent major discovery on its Condor project which is in a very important area —Shuar’s territory in Ecuador. As far as Corriente’s Mirador Copper-Gold project, Shannon suggests that they’ve probably got 340 million tones or enough for a 38 year mine life to produce 25,000 tones per day. Additional resources could be added, he suggests, but with that kind of a reserve life ...it should be plenty. They are currently in negotiations with SNC-Lavalin about both engineering and construction contracts to build the mine, and he expects within a few weeks to be able to approach the Board of Directors with a plan to get the mine built. When we ask him to predict some commodity prices for down the road, copper is all important to Corriente, so that’s the only one he wanted to talk about ... He suggests, that Corriente’s cost of production should be roughly $1.00 a pound, so current prices are way more than is necessary! When asked about how long copper could maintain some of these prices, he just points to no new capacity over the last several years and with the time taken to build new mines these days, he can’t see much additional capacity for their next four years. While four to eight years down the road becomes a little murkier, he wouldn’t be surprised to see many more potential mines delayed in production, delivering a commodity cycle longer and stronger than many can remember ... Canaccord analyst Wendell Zerb recently toured their project and just a few days ago, when we interviewed him, he picked Corriente as one of his top picks. Shortly, we hope to see a report from Wendell and it will interesting to see what his target might be. The chart tells you what has happened to Corriente and many other mining stories over the last while.